24: Redemption
By fred | November 24, 2008
(S07E00) Remember last season? The writers’ strike, and how only 8 episodes of the new season of 24 were done, thus resulting in Fox having to delay the return of Jack Bauer for quite some time ? Last season was one season without any Jack Bauer at all, and we’ve been waiting 18 months to see him back. Adding to that how the sixth season of the show was by far the worst, and needless to say, we’ve really been waiting for Jack’s Redemption !
Waiting for January and the new season, Fox knew we couldn’t wait anymore and they gave us this two-hour movie, to help us wait. This was a prelude to next season, to introduce us what Jack did after the end of last season and where he was headed for the next, it was to get us ready for a new day, it was to forget about last season and it was to remind us how much we missed Jack kicking some ass !
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Shows: 24
In Series: 24 Season 7
(S07E01) We’ve been waiting for him, and it never gets old: Jack is back! I don’t know about you, but as far as I’m concerned I tried, as always, to remain as much spoiler-free as I possibly could, because I just hate spoilers and I believe the only way to enjoy a show best is to come in having no clue what’s going to happen whatsoever, and be fully surprised (hopefully) along the way.
(S07E02) And we’re back already, with one more hour in the always exciting life of Jack Bauer. As is the rule we picked up right where we left off and moved on from there, except that while I thought the first hour was pretty good, this one did slow things down a lot. During the first hour it’s not that an awful lot of things took place, but many did, we were figuring things out and it felt like the plot was moving forward.
(S07E03) We’re already back into the latest day of Jack Bauer, and I think there’s two things that could be said about this episode. Well there’s actually a bit more, but there are two main elements that it did inspire, one of them was good while the other was actually bad. So I will start with the bad one of course, because you always get the bad news first, right?
(S07E04) As as become the rule in all of Jack’s special day, with each hour things get worse and worse. At 11.00am Jack was already running from the FBI and most definitely going to prison if he got caught, and it might have looked as if things couldn’t get much worse for the once respected CTU agent. Of course, this being 24 that was merely the beginning of Jack’s troubles, and we can still/always expect things to get worse.
(S07E05) Continuing into the new day of Jack Bauer, and while there are things that aren’t for the best, clearly, there’s at least one thing that I find pretty cool: we get to see Jack’s day. I know it’s sort of the whole concept of the show, but often in past season we’ve had an episode during which were told that Jack was in custody or something, only to dedicate most of the screen time to other plots, such as the White House, CTU or the bad guys.
(S07E06) As I said last week, the cool thing about this season is that – while there’s still some fillers here and there of course – we get to mostly see Jack’s day, not so much what happens at the White House and elsewhere (or it mostly feels that way), which usually means we’re right where we want to be, where the action is. Now because of that, and because this is Jack Bauer we’re talking about, things are never just flat, there’s always a little tension here, a bullet there, and someone bleeding, if not dying, around the corner.
(S07E07) As the day progresses things are changing, and as as often been the case in the past the entire plot will be evolving as well. On many occasions we’ve seen that the bad guys fro the beginning of the season weren’t the real bad guys, but that other people, far more threatening people were behind everything, and had a much different agenda of their own.
(S07E08) Things are moving on and while we’re still on a transitional episode, one thing that can’t be said is that we’re getting too much boring fillers before getting to whatever comes next in the conspiracy of this long day. In past seasons we’ve had episodes where it felt as if nothing happened, where Jack was sitting behind a desk for hours, literally, or where boring fillers took over the interesting bits we wanted to see.
(S07E10) There is something that’s very enjoyable this season with 24. I’m not sure I could actually pinpoint what it is exactly or how it is they do it, but this season is just pretty darn good. I mean, take this episode for example : in all fairness, there wasn’t much that took place. We all knew that things were about to change, and since we’re getting dangerously close to the mid-season mark it was unavoidable : a new plot with bigger things at skates would be uncovered soon, as we’ll go higher and look at the boss of our current bad guy.